Topic: ⚽ UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany ⚽ - Qualifiers - page 399. (Read 46449 times)

That is true but European leagues are not the same thing as European national teams. Clubs in the European leagues have a lot of money and with that money and great infrastructure they attract the best players from all around the world. National teams are different because they can only take players from their nations. There are few exceptions where a player can join another nation's team but those are exceptions. However, like you said, those top European leagues give players the opportunity to constantly play football at the highest level. For example, s good player will improve his performance if he is playing in England. While the same player will probably stagnate if he plays football in some minor league.

UEFA still has the best football leagues in the world. No other leagues can match competitions such as English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Eredivisie in terms of quality and popularity. I would say that if you take the list of top-5 football leagues around the world, all of them would be from Europe. And this has helped the European players enormously. They get the experience by playing against the best players in the world. But now, UEFA clubs are increasingly diversifying their squads, by adding players from all around the world, including those from CAF and AFC (in addition to UEFA and CONMEBOL).

European soccer has been at the top for a long time as not only there is a very high interest in the game but a lot of money is invested by the owners of the leagues, this may give the impression they are stagnating but when you are at the top there is nowhere to go but down, the rest of the world is catching up as they send their own players to Europe and they play against the very best, but without a strong domestic league it is difficult to see a team other than Argentina or Brazil being able to win a world cup to those European teams.

Europe will still dominate world football for the next few decades, while other countries, such as Latin America, Asia or Africa, will only be lucky in a few matches against European teams.  Spain, France and Germany are still the countries that dominate world football ^{(although currently their FIFA rankings are down and are below Brazil and Argentina)}.  

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after a few days ago, one of the stadiums in northern turkey was officially one of the stadiums used for the 2024 euro qualifying round, until now the condition is still unknown ^{(whether there is damage or not)}.

[1] https://www.faw.cymru/en/news/venue-confirmed-turkey-uefa-euro-2024-qualifier/

There is absolutely zero dominance by European teams anymore, yeah they are still some of the best teams and if you look at the semi finals, it was between teams from Europe mostly over any other continent, so the top is still euro heavy, but when you spread it like how Euro cup does and there are many teams, some of them are not that good anymore.

I think Croatia will be the big surprise in this game but in a bad way, they were finalists in one world cup and semi finalist in the next, but they will probably be bad on this Euro and everyone will be shocked about it. France looks like they are good enough to beat everyone no matter what, I think they can do that.

I agree that European teams are stagnating while other nations teams are getting better. As an European, I find this good because it will bring us more good games in the World Championships. But if you look at the world champions, other than Brazil and Argentina there is no nation outside Europe that have won the World Cup since Uruguay in 1950. Every nation (including the top European nations) can lose a game or two. But we will see if your words that European dominance is coming to an end will come true.

If the quality was so high, then the following outcomes were not possible in Qatar 2022:

1. Australia defeating Danmark (1-0)
2. Japan defeating Germany (2-1)
3. Japan defeating Spain (2-1)
4. Morocco defeating Belgium (2-0)
5. South Korea defeating Portugal (2-1)

On all these instances, European (UEFA) teams were defeated by teams from AFC or CAF. The days of European dominance in football is over. The sooner you realize it, that much better for you. Else you will continue to lose bets on these teams.

Honestly, the competition at the EURO is probably even greater than at the World Cup because the quality of the participating teams is higher.
At the EURO, there are no weak teams that can be easily beaten by a large margin, as sometimes happens at the World Cup.
That is why my expectations from the Croatian national team and Modrić are that it will be much easier for them to win the title and the gold medal at the final tournament of the League of Nations in June this year than at the EURO. After the final tournament of the League of Nations, Modrić will most likely say goodbye to playing for the Croatian national team.
As for the rest, the age of the player should never matter, but only the quality of the game.

I am not entirely sure if Croatia would be able to get a title, but it is true that they have managed to shock the world with Modric as their best player and he is considered "old" for football. I get that if you are going to buy a player for a club team, you would prefer a younger player, why not get a 25 year old who has a bigger potential than a 35 year old, but when we are talking about national teams, that means you are going to need that player for a maximum of 5-10 games and that doesn't really matter if they are old or not.

This is why it's quite unimportant how old a player is, as long as we are talking about players that could end up with something decent in the end and provide for the club.

The truth is that the football that Holland revealed is very great, however, French football is quite accurate, when it was their turn to play, Holland vs. Argentina, it was a very exciting game, besides that the emotions were very heated, very hot and this is something that took many by surprise, especially because of the way Messi came out fighting with Number 19, so this makes a team like the Netherlands stronger, because they were at the level of one of the world champions, so In particular, I would be more careful with the Netherlands than with France, despite the fact that France is the second best in the world.


The thing in Germany was something that hit almost everyone a lot, however I was seeing some articles that said that Japan is preparing in a great way so that they can win the world cup consecutively, I think they are still in sa phase, and it is for this reason that they have such a lot of victories, soccer in Japan has really grown and it is something that is very positive, I particularly wanted to see that Japan could give good surprises, and even if their soccer They have grown a lot, maybe for the next World Cup if the Japanese classify they will no longer see them as a weak team, but very careful.

The thing about Modric, Benzema and those players who classify them as older, the truth is that I didn't see that age affected them, and it's a shame if we don't see them in the next World Cup, I'd really like that. have the privilege of being given more of their master plays.

That's right, the best players should always play, regardless of age.
Who can say that Messi, Benzema and Modric are too old and should stop playing.
Real regularly wins the Champions League with such old players, and the Croatian football team won two medals at the last 2 world championships with Modric as the main player.
I sincerely hope that Modrić will finish his football career at EURO 2026, and to win any title in football, the experience and mental strength of the team is always important in addition to the individual quality of the football players.
It's difficult for me to say why Germany lost to Japan, but I think the reason is not only weak defense but also ineffectiveness in attack and it is obvious that this team needs some changes and new players in the team.

I think experienced players or young players argument doesn't matter and only better player should play. Doesn't matter how old a player is, if they are the best option for that position then they are the best option for that position, there is nothing else about it.

You could be 18 years old, you could be 38 years old and if you are the player that your nation should play because you are the best, then they should put you in there. Old or young shouldn't have mattered and sometimes it unfortunately did, like in Germany case. I am sure that most managers don't do that though, they probably pick the best players and do not consider age to be an issue at all.

That's why all teams have coaches who decide if experienced players should play or younger players. But when you look at the game against Japan that Germany lost, their worst players were Musiala who is 19 years old and Havertz who is 23 (I still count him as a young player). Maybe they would have won the game if their coach put more experienced players into the game from the start. Who knows. But every coach must think about introducing young players and that's best done by combining few young players with experienced players. If they keep playing with experienced players, the time will come when those players won't be competitive anymore and those younger players won't have experience in playing important games.

I agree with the argument that most of the players will be in their late 20s or 30s. But in the previous editions, most of the European teams had good players in their early 20s. However this time (Qatar 2022) only a few of the European teams had such players. Some of the teams do have players who are 20 or 21 years old, but they are no match for the more experienced players. Players of the calibre of Erling Håland or Ronaldo of 2006 are extremely rare nowadays. Let's take the example of Germany. They have a few - Karim Adeyemi, Youssoufa Moukoko and Lukas Nmecha. But these players are not even regulars in the playing XI. Most of the attack is being done by Müller, Gnabry and Gündoğan.


We need a mix of younger and more experienced players. Spain lost out, because players such as Sergio Busquets and Álvaro Morata didn't performed. To their credit, they have one of the most talented younger player in the UEFA (Ferran Torres).

Well, the way I see this, it's funny because both groups aim to be two groups of death, I don't know, but seeing these European teams compete like this is something that can lead many to say that only those two teams will pass, Now what I don't remember is that if the two best third parties pass in the Eurocup? I know that in the Copa América it is like that, but here with regard to the European championships, I think that it can happen, right? However, these two groups are the ones that will spice up this competition, just imagining it makes me excited, it's almost there, I know we're just starting the year, but by 2024 what's left is not long.

We can bet on the youth, and it's a good strategy, but let's just look at the example of Spain in Qatar, all the youngsters led, almost a Barcelona, and what did they win? nothing, go away, why? because the youngsters do not have experience, they do not know how to deal with certain eventualities that arise on the field of play, it is partly the fault of Luis Enrique who did not know how to choose a team and left the best without playing, this is because I did it due to a lack of maturity despite the fact that he is already old, so I would not bet on having a team of young people alone, that is why it is better that they focus on the championships of the sub-20 category, it is better, the professional is something else.

It's not strange that most European teams are composed of players in their late 20s and early 30s. That is the period when a player should be in his top form. It's rare that a player in his early 20s becomes an irreplaceable part of the team. Young players need older, more experienced players in the team to look up to.

Portugal has some good younger players such as João Félix, Rafael Leão and Gonçalo Ramos. But these players are miles behind Ronaldo. And it will take many years before any of them can be even compared with Ronaldo. Even in 2006, when Ronaldo was just 20 years old, he was considered as a superstar. Players such as Félix and Leão doesn't have that sort of a reputation now, and they are well in to their 20s. But then I have to admit that most of the European teams doesn't have quality younger players in their ranks. The squads are mostly comprised of player in their late 20s or 30s.

there is too much talk about Ronaldo lately, he chooses to play in Saudi Arabia, and probably will lose competing skills in some period, afterwards he will have hard time to play against players that are regularly competing in European leagues
who will take captain band in Portugal is a real question, but that will be solved as well, Pepe is probably there until retirement, and there are several good players in team, that can get band on their arm as well
but, overall, Portugal will stay as top European football team for some time certainly, they have good players, and Benfica is also playing great football with several young Portugal players

Ronaldo probably helped Portugal to become one of the top football superpowers like you say, but I think the time has come when Portugal can play good game without Ronaldo. There are so many good players in Portugal team that their coach probably doesn't have to worry about losing Ronaldo. The question is who will be the captain now that Ronaldo is out. Pepe was their captain in the last two games in Qatar but he is 39 years old. There is no way he will play next year.

If Ronaldo wears the national jersey again, that will be for Saudi Arabia and not for Portugal. After all the bitter experiences that he had during Qatar 2022, I don't think that he will consider playing for Portugal again. Also, Portuguese management won't be much interested in Ronaldo, given the fact that he has moved to Al Nassr. Ronaldo helped Portugal to become one of the top football superpowers in the world. But that era has ended now and both the sides should now move on with their respective future paths.